Salisbury and Park

Here's the intersection of Salisbury Street and Park Avenue showing the somewhat quaint Queen Anne style fronts designed by George Gilbert Scott. Did the Council really have to put that road sign just there; I mean it wasn't there a few years back. Are drivers really so thick they need to be told to go round a roundabout? (Don't answer that.) There are mermaids too but doesn't every street have mermaids?

I had to change the title of this post as I had the avenue  before the street and that is a big no-no with our American friends who tell us how to live, who we should get our technology from, who our friends should be, who should be our Prime Minister, how we should write our own language, and which way we should pee in the morning (For this relief much thanks ...) We're touched by your presence, no really, we are, touched.

Election? What election?

For the last fifty days the country has been gripped by the democratic process, millions enthralled by the choices before them, the enormous responsibility of choosing the next government ... or rather it has not been any of these things. I do not recall an election with so little interest being shown, so few posters in windows, so few leaflets (I've had nothing from the Labour lot for the second election running, I think they aren't trying), or hustings or meetings of any kind whatsoever. If it wasn't for the TV/media constantly going on about it you'd never know there was an election going on at all. (What if it was all fake news after all and there really isn't an election? How would we know? ...) It's as if everyone really knows these campaigns change nothing so no-one is paying attention. So for what it's worth my prediction is the Tories will win by at least forty seats quite possibly by many more, not the silly landslide predicted fifty long days ago but easily enough. Oh and Diana Johnson will win as well; this is Hull; donkeys with red rosettes win in Hull.

Give me a sign ...

Salisbury Street again surprises with some really weird signs erected in front gardens. If you want to know the story behind them I suggest you make one up for yourself... me? I know nothing.

The one and only

I have posted before of George Gilbert Scott Jr and his Queen Anne revival style residences on Salisbury Street. However I overlooked this odd thing that I can only assume was one of a pair of gateposts. Now a twelve or fourteen foot high multi-layered obelisk topped gatepost may seem a tad over the top these days but if you were going to get into the full Queen Anne revival style this must have been de rigueur. To me it would more fitting in a cemetery than at the end of a drive way but to each their own ... Thankfully there is only one, well, that I could find.

Salisbury Street

Read any description of the Avenues area of Hull and sooner or later you'll come across mention of George Gilbert Scott Jr and his Queen Anne revival style residences on Salisbury Street. Now when it comes to the Gilbert Scotts of this world it's Sir George père (Albert memorial, Midland Hotel at St Pancras station etc) and Sir Giles petit-fils (Liverpool Cathedral and red telephone boxes) that are remembered in the architectural world. George junior's works in the Queen Anne revival style have been overlooked for the most part, perhaps not without reason. These buildings on Salisbury Street with their concrete and brick construction are mind numbingly symmetrical and twee. They have some interesting external decoration but they're not really my cup of tea. They are Grade 2 listed buildings and have I suppose some historical interest in architectural terms.

Last year some brave soul proposed to build a block of flats in the gardens behind two of these buildings. Fat chance! Cue a whole brigade of angry locals and the Hull Civic Society (see here from page 9) all fired up and the Council (which a few years ago subsidised the renovation of these buildings), of course, refused it. 

I wouldn't want you to go away thinking all of Salisbury Street is like this. There are, thankfully,  only eight of these buildings the rest of the street is more typical Victorian middle class terrace, with garrets for house servants, of course.